People walk past a closed sign at a retailer in Chicago.|Nam Y. Huh/AP Picture
A data breach in the Small company Association’s online application portal might have jeopardized personal details for nearly 8,000 services seeking emergency loans last month, the agency said today.
In a letter to affected business owners, a copy of which was acquired by POLITICO, SBA said it discovered March 25 that the application system for Economic Injury Disaster Loans might have disclosed individual details to other applicants of the program– consisting of Social Security numbers, earnings amounts, names, addresses and contact information.
In a declaration to POLITICO, a SBA spokesperson said the breach affected 7,900 applicants for the EIDL program, which is separate from the Payroll Security Program loans. The representative did not state how the breach happened.
” We instantly disabled the impacted portion of the website, attended to the issue, and relaunched the application website,” the spokesperson said.
The SBA stated it will use candidates a year of complimentary credit monitoring.
